Literacy Leadership

School Leaders

Literacy is central to the life of any school. School leaders function as instructional leaders, helping the entire community work together to study, develop, share, and learn from state-of-the-art methods of teaching reading and writing. School leaders empower members of their community to function as action researchers, keeping a close eye on students’ interests and progress, and engaging in collaborative inquiry to accelerate the learning curve of everyone in the school. The TCRWP supports this work in a variety of ways.

Support for Principals

The superintendents and principals who lead schools affiliated with the TCRWP are invited to attend the monthly Principals as Curricular Leaders Conference days held at Teachers College. Approximately 250 school leaders participate, most of whom have come together for many years now. This close-knit community uses these conferences as a time to plan school visits and to share resources and solutions to common problems. A principal’s role in a school is often a solitary one—although a principal is never alone, there is a sense in which the principal is also always alone. No one else in the community has the same role, the same responsibilities. This makes it all the more important that principals have an opportunity to forge close, supportive relationships with leaders from other schools engaged in similar work.

The Principals as Curricular Leaders Conference keeps school leaders informed about the work that teachers in their schools are apt to do at any one time, and provides lenses for observing and guiding that work. These conference days also allow leaders to rub shoulders with some of the authors of books that inform thousands—even millions—of classrooms. Leaders such as Grant Wiggins, Douglas Reeves, Karin Hess, Charlotte Danielson, Tim Rasinski, and David Rock have keynoted recent conferences. After the keynote, principals join year-long study groups on topics such as curricular leadership and assessment-based instruction. Included in each day is an array of optional breakfast and lunch time workshops.

In addition to these monthly conferences, the TCRWP provides a host of other learning opportunities for principals during on-site staff development within schools. During a TCRWP staff developer’s school visit, the principal participates alongside teachers in labsites and study group meetings, modeling engagement, reflective practice, and risk-taking. Often the principal visits with these teachers during their literacy time between a staff developer’s visits, joining them in the effort to put new ideas into practice. The principal also learns as a supervisor, watching the staff developer coach, demonstrate, scaffold, collaborate to set goals, and give feedback.

Many districts also ask us to lead study groups that support literacy leadership and that help principals from across the district align their literacy leadership practices to one another’s. These study groups tackle topics such as supporting a spiral K-8 curriculum in literacy, supervising reading and writing instruction, designing approaches to literacy that support all learners, reforming curriculum and methods to align with the Common Core State Standards and the Danielson Framework for Teaching, accelerating achievement, and supporting data-based literacy instruction.

Support for: Literacy Coaches

The Project offers both study groups and institutes for literacy coaches that are designed specifically to support this important population of teacher leaders. We expect that many graduates of our Literacy Coaching Institute will one day join the Hall of Fame, along with others who have apprenticed in this guild. Some of our own staff developers are among that group. Additional alumni include Carl Anderson, Janet Angelillo, Sharon Taberski, Carmen Farina, Ralph Fletcher, Katie Ray, Joanne Hindley, Randy and Katherine Bomer, Georgia Heard, Donna Santman, Kate Montgomery, and Kathy Collins.

Professional Texts to Support Literacy Leaders

A Principal’s Guide to Leadership in the Teaching of Writing by Lucy Calkins and Laurie Pessah (paperback and DVD); available from Heinemann.

A Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman; available from Heinemann.

A School Leader’s Guide to Excellence: Collaborating Our Way to Better Schools
by Carmen Farina and Laura Kotch; available from Heinemann.